A year ago, home sellers held all the cards. Now buyers are pushing back, with more than half of San Antonio sellers still slashing prices while San Francisco homes get bidding wars again. That split tells you almost everything about the U.S. housing market right now.
A new Redfin report shows 35.4% of U.S. home sellers cut their asking price in April. That's down from a record 36.6% in August and a slight tick lower than March.
Three things are pulling the number down. Buyer demand is creeping back as the job market firms up.
The flood of new listings that gave buyers leverage last year has slowed. And sellers are finally pricing more in line with what the market will pay, so they don't need to drop the price three weeks later.
The average price cut, when it happens, is still 4%. That hasn't moved in two years.
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Nearly three in five sellers in San Antonio (58.7%) cut their price in April, the most of any metro. Austin came in second at 55.8%, followed by Phoenix (50.8%), Dallas (50.5%) and Tampa (48.2%).
All five have roughly twice as many home sellers as buyers, which is why sellers there compete for the buyers and not the other way around.
In four of those five metros, the share of sellers cutting prices is slowly falling. San Antonio dropped about a percentage point from March, while Austin fell two points from 57.8% to 55.8%.
Phoenix is the outlier, with the share of sellers cutting prices ticking up from 48.1% to 50.8%, the biggest month-over-month increase in the country.
San Francisco is the cleanest example of why this market is no longer one story. Just 13.9% of San Francisco sellers cut their asking price in April, the smallest share of any major metro.
The city flipped from a buyer's market to a seller's market last month, with Redfin saying the AI boom is doing most of the lifting.
Newark, NJ (15.1%), San Jose (16.9%), Chicago (19.8%) and Providence, RI (19.9%) are the next four metros where sellers hold the most pricing power. Newark and Providence are two of just seven seller's markets in the country right now, and Chicago is one of the few balanced markets.
Redfin Premier agent Justin Gomez said he's seeing bidding wars at all price points in recent weeks, with sellers pricing more accurately from the start and demand picking up across the board.
Philadelphia saw the biggest one-month drop in price cuts of any major metro, falling from 33.7% to 30.3%. Jacksonville, FL was next, with the share dropping from 47.7% to 44.9%.
Two housing markets exist in this country right now. One is fighting to attract buyers, while the other is fighting them off.
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